KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

**Professor Jeffrey Braithwaite**
Australia

**Professor Vikram Patel**
United States

**Professor Norman Sartorius**
Switzerland

INVITED SPEAKERS

**Professor Richard Porter**
New Zealand

**Ms Hannah Whittaker-Komaku**
New Zealand

CLINICAL UPDATE SPEAKERS

Professor Gabriele Bammer

Gabriele Bammer is Professor of Integration and Implementation Sciences (i2S) at The Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra. She is developing the new discipline of Integration and Implementation Sciences to improve research strengths for tackling complex societal and environmental problems (see https://i2insights.org/i2s/) and she curates the popular Integration and Implementation Insights blog and toolkit (http://i2Insights.org). She is also the inaugural President of the Global Alliance for Inter- and Transdisciplinarity. In December 2024 she received the ANU’s most prestigious accolade, the Peter Baume Award, which “recognises eminent achievement and merit of the highest order.

Professor Jeffrey Braithwaite

Jeffrey Braithwaite, Professor of Health Systems Research, is Founding Director, Australian Institute of Health Innovation, Macquarie University. He is Past President of the International Society for Quality in Health Care. He consults to the WHO, OECD, and the UN. An international-regarded health systems researcher, he examines quality and safety, health sector reform; the future of healthcare to 2030; learning health systems; and healthcare and climate change. With 900 refereed contributions, 17 books, and 1,540 conference presentations, he has published in the New England Journal of Medicine, British Medical Journal, JAMA, The Lancet, The Lancet Psychiatry, and Nature Climate Change.

Dr Louise Byrne

Dr Louise Byrne has multiple, first-hand, life-changing adverse experiences which have profoundly impacted her life. Over 21 years Louise has worked in a broad variety of designated lived-living Experience roles. Louise’s seminal 16-year program of research has supported growth in understanding, awareness and valuing of lived experience workforces, nationally and internationally, and helps foster perspectives of lived experience work as a respected, credible, evidence-based discipline. Louise’s work as a strategic consultant, trainer and thought leader on the role and benefit of lived experience workforces, assists meaningful implementation of research findings and promotes evidence informed approaches to lived experience workforce development.

Professor Vikram Patel

Vikram Patel is the Paul Farmer Professor and Chair of the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He also holds honorary professorships at the Harvard Chan School of Public Health, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the Public Health Foundation of India. He co-leads the department’s Mental Health for All lab and co-leads the GlobalMentalHealth@Harvard initiative. His work has focused on the burden of mental health problems across the life course, their association with social disadvantage, and the use of community resources for their prevention and treatment. He is a co-founder of the Movement for Global Mental Health, the Centre for Global Mental Health (at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine), the Mental Health Innovations Network, and Sangath, an Indian NGO which won the WHO Public Health Champion of India prize and the MacArthur Foundation’s International Prize. He is a Fellow of the UK's Academy of Medical Sciences and member of the US National Academy of Medicine. He served on the committee which drafted India’s first National Mental Health Policy and the WHO High Level Independent Commission for Non-Communicable Diseases. He co-led the Lancet Commission on Global Mental Health & Sustainable Development and the Lancet-World Psychiatric Association Commission on Depression. He has been awarded a Rhodes Scholarship, a Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellowship, the Chalmers Medal (Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene); the Sarnat Prize (National Academy of Medicine); the Pardes Humanitarian Prize (the Brain and Behaviour Research Foundation); the Klerman Senior Investigator Prize (the Depression and Bipolar Disorder Alliance); an Honorary OBE (UK Government); and the John Dirk Canada Gairdner Award in Global Health. He has been awarded honorary doctorates from Georgetown University, York University, Stellenbosch University and the University of Amsterdam. He was listed in TIME Magazine’s 100 most influential persons of the year in 2015.

Professor Sarah Hollingsworth (Holly) Lisanby

Sarah Hollingsworth “Holly” Lisanby, MD, DLFAPA, is the Founding Dean and Foundation Professor of the ASU School of Medicine and Medical Engineering and Professor Emeritus at Duke University. Dr. Lisanby was Founding Director of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Division of Translational Research and co-led NIH BRAIN Initiative teams supporting next generation neurotechology. Former JP Gibbons Endowed Professor and Chair of the Duke Department of Psychiatry, she founded the Brain Stimulation Divisions at Duke, Columbia, and NIMH. Her key accomplishments include pioneering magnetic seizure therapy (MST) as a rapidly acting antidepressant.

Ms De Backman-Hoyle

Ms De Backman-Hoyle CSP, CLP, FAIM is a lived experience leader with almost 20 years’ advocacy in the Australian mental health sector. As National Manager, Community Engagement at Mental Health Carers Australia, she works to centre the perspectives of families, carers, kin and those with lived and living experience in policy, practice and reform. Over more than a decade with the RANZCP, including as Co-Chair of the Community Collaboration Committee, she has helped co-design the College’s Lived and Living Experience Strategy and, in 2025, was awarded the RANZCP College Citation in recognition of her outstanding contribution.

Professor Michael Berk

Michael Berk is currently a NHMRC Leadership 3 research Fellow and is Deakin Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry at Deakin University and Barwon Health, where he heads the Institute for Innovation in Mental and Physical Health and Clinical Translation (IMPACT). He also is an Honorary Professorial Research fellow in the Department of Psychiatry, the Florey Institute for Neuroscience and Mental Health and Orygen Youth Health at Melbourne University, as well as in the School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine at Monash University. He has published over 1650 papers and is listed by Thompson Reuters ISI as highly cited (2015-2025).

Professor Karen Jones

Karen Jones (PhD Cornell University) is professor of philosophy at the University of Melbourne. She has written extensively about trust, what it is, and when it is justified. Her writing also explores the everyday pathologies of trust including mismatches between trust and trustworthiness created by racism, sexism, and socially manipulated climates of distrust. She also works in metaethics, and moral psychology with a focus on the emotions. Much of her work is from a feminist perspective.

Dr Matthew Macfarlane

A/Prof Matthew Macfarlane is a consultation-liaison psychiatrist and neuropsychiatrist working at Wollongong Hospital, NSW. He also works in the Discipline Lead in Psychiatry role at the Graduate School of Medicine, University of Wollongong. In these roles, he works with people with functional disorders and chronic disorders of central sensitisation and interoception. His research interests include functional neurological disorder, catatonia, neuroimaging and sleep medicine.

Professor Helen Milroy

Helen Milroy is a descendant of the Palyku people of the Pilbara region of Western Australia but was born and educated in Perth. She is Australia’s first Indigenous doctor and child psychiatrist. Currently Helen is the Stan Perron Professor of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the Perth Children’s Hospital and University of Western Australia and Honorary Research at the Telethon Kids Institute. Helen is the Chair of the Gayaa Dhuwi Proud Spirit Australia organisation and a board member of Beyond Blue. Helen has been on state and national mental health and research advisory committees and boards with a particular focus on Indigenous mental health as well as the wellbeing of children. From 2013-2017 Helen was a Commissioner for the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse and from 2017-2021 was a Commissioner with the National Mental Health Commission and an AFL Commissioner from 2019-2024. In 2020, Helen was the joint winner of the Australian Mental Health Prize; named the WA Australian of the Year for 2021 and became a Member of the Order of Australia in 2022. Helen is also an award winning author and illustrator of children’s books.

Doctor Annie Parsons

Dr Annie Parsons is a dual-trained child, adolescent and forensic psychiatrist working in New South Wales with children and young people in contact with, or at risk of entering, the criminal justice system. She has a strong interest in reducing health inequity and improving access to assessment, treatment and psychosocial support in this population, particularly those with mental illness and neurodevelopmental disorder.

Professor Richard Porter

Richard Porter is Professor and head of the Department of Psychological Medicine, University of Otago, Christchurch. He has worked as a Consultant Psychiatrist in a service for adults with intellectual disability for many years. Prof Porter’s research has focused on psychological and chronobiological treatments for mood disorders and treatments for neuropsychological impairment in depression and bipolar disorder. He has published over 300 scientific papers and was an author of the 2020 RANZCP Mood Disorder Guidelines. He was Deputy editor of ANZJP for many years and is now Deputy Editor of British Journal of Psychiatry Open.

Professor Dan Siskind

Prof Siskind trained as a psychiatrist in Australia and the United States. He works clinically as a psychiatrist in Brisbane, Australia with people with treatment refractory schizophrenia. His research interests include treatment refractory schizophrenia, clozapine and the physical health comorbidities associated with schizophrenia. He has over 300 publications and AU$60million in competitive research grants, with over AU$7 million as CIA.

Dr Calum Smith

Dr Calum A Smith MBChB, BMedSci (Hons), MRCPsych, FRANZCP, Cert Forensic Psych, MFMH (Ex) is a consultant forensic psychiatrist. He currently works in Western Australia in general adult roles. He has previously worked in Forensic psychiatry in NSW for almost ten years. He continues to work as an independent court report writer and has held educational roles in other services. He is interested in real world contemporary systemic approaches to psychiatry, specifically how we safely and effectively reduce restrictive practices, and how service provision impacts outcomes in individuals.

Ms Hannah Whittaker-Komatsu

Hannah Whittaker-Komatsu is Programme Director – Lived Experience at Manatū Hauora (New Zealand’s Ministry of Health). She leads initiatives that embed lived and living experience into mental health, addiction, and suicide prevention policy and practice. Beginning her journey as a Peer Educator with the New Zealand Prostitutes Collective, Hannah combines professional social work training with deep experiential knowledge to champion co-produced solutions. She advocates for reframing what society calls “disorder” as survival strategies and promotes learning-together approaches to system change. Hannah also founded Thriving Madly, a creative mutual support community fostering connection and collective wisdom.

A/Prof Shalini Arunogiri

Associate Professor Shalini Arunogiri is a clinical addiction psychiatrist and researcher. She is the Clinical Director of the Hamilton Centre - Victorian Statewide Centre for Addiction and Mental Health at Turning Point, and Associate Professor at Monash University. She is immediate-past Chair of the RANZCP Faculty of Addiction Psychiatry (2017-2024), and leads a research program in innovative treatments for substance use and mental health comorbidity (>$20M in funding, and >70 peer reviewed publications).

Professor Rebecca McKetin

Professor Rebecca McKetin (BSc(Psychol)Hons. PhD) leads a program of research into stimulant use epidemiology and interventions at the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre, UNSW. She is recognised as a global leader in methamphetamine research. Her work has involved trialling new pharmacotherapy options (the Tina Trial, the N-ICE trial; the LiMA study), developing and evaluating the online delivery of psychological help (Breaking the Ice, wadawanti), and evaluating community-based treatment options. She recently co-authored the British Association of Pharmacotherapy’s evidence-based guidelines for the pharmacological management of stimulant use.

Professor Nagesh Pai

Professor Nagesh Pai is the Foundation Professor and Chair of Psychiatry at the University of Wollongong, a Senior Clinical Academic, ISLHD. He is a member of the MVESPMHN Committee and the Faculty of Adult Psychiatry, RANZCP. Apart from Secretary, the Education section of WPA, he is a member of the Primary care and lifestyle Psychiatry and Schizophrenia Section of WPA. He is a Visiting Professor of Psychiatry at SRM University and Manipal Academy of Higher Education. He has several 14 research grants to his credit during the past decade and has published over 330 papers in peer-reviewed journals. He serves as a MAJOR in the Australian Army.

Dr Peta Wright

Dr Peta Wright is a gynaecologist and fertility specialist. She completed her undergraduate medical degree with Honours at Monash University and obtained her RANZCOG Fellowship in 2013. She has completed a Masters of Reproductive Medicine and a certificate in Women’s Integrative Medicine. Peta is deeply committed to all aspects of women’s healthcare and founded Vera Wellness in 2020. She strives to take a holistic approach to optimising the health of women of all ages. It is Peta’s purpose in life to help women remember the magic and beauty in their bodies and help to create a society that honours women and supports them to feel safe in their bodies and in the world.

Dr Sathya Rao

Professor Sathya Rao is the Director of Spectrum, the Victorian clinical centre of excellence for personality disorder & complex trauma and the acting Clinical Program Director of Mental Health Program, Eastern Health. He is an Adjunct Clinical Professor at Monash University. He is the Vice President of Australian BPD Foundation. He is the president of Australasian Association for Research & Treatment of Personality Disorders (AART-PD) and chairs the Committee for Ethics and Professional Practice of RANZCP. He was awarded the ‘Meritorious Service Award’ in 2020 and Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) in 2022.

Professor Norman Sartorius

Professor Norman Sartorius, MD, PhD, FRCPsych holds professorial appointments at several universities in Europe, the USA and elsewhere. He was the Director of the Mental Health Programme of the WHO, President of the World Psychiatric Association and of the European Psychiatric Association. He is currently President of the Association for the Improvement of Mental Health Programmes in Geneva. His main interests at present are problems related to comorbidity of mental and physical disorders, the fight against stigma and the education of early career psychiatrists. He published more than 600 papers in peer reviewed journals and authored or edited more than 120 books (h = 122).